This eBook was created by Charles Aldarondo (pg@aldarondo.net). IF I WERE KING BY JUSTIN HUNTLY McCARTHY DEDICATION To Her Through Whom and For Whom This Book was Written "The Loveliest Lady this side of Heaven." XXI. XII. MCMI. If I were king--ah love, if I were king! What tributary nations would I bring To stoop before your sceptre and to swear Allegiance to your lips and eyes and hair. Beneath your feet what treasures I would fling:-- The stars should be your pearls upon a string, The world a ruby for your finger ring, And you should have the sun and moon to wear If I were king. Let these wild dreams and wilder words take wing, Deep in the woods I hear a shepherd sing A simple ballad to a sylvan air, Of love that ever finds your face more fair. I could not give you any godlier thing If I were king. CHAPTER I IN THE FIRCONE TAVERN In the dark main room of the Fircone Tavern the warm June air seemed to have lost all its delicacy, like a degraded angel. It was sodden through and through, as with the lees of wine; it was stained and shamed with the smells of hams and cheeses; it was thick and heavy as if with the breaths of all the rogues and all the vagabonds that had haunted the hostelry from its evil dawn. Such guttering lights and glimmering flames as lit the place--for there was a small fire on the wide hearth in spite of the fine weather--peopled the gloom with fantastic quivering shadows as of lean fingers that unfolded themselves to filch, or clenched themselves to stab in the back. But its patrons seemed to like the place well enough in spite of its miasma, and Master Robin Turgis, the fat landlord, drowsy with his own wine and dripping from the heat, surveyed them complacently, and wallowed as it were in the rattle and clink of mug and can, the full-throated laughter and the shrill chatter, crisply emphasized by oaths, which assured him of the Fircone's popularity with its intimates. Master Robin's intelligence was limited; his wit was simple; the processes of his mind moved easily along the lines of least resistance. The Burgundians might be hammering with mailed fists at the walls of Paris; the fire-new crown of Louis the Eleventh might be falling from the royal forehead: it mattered not a jot to dishonest Robin so long as the Fircone brimmed with company.